How To Set Up The Most Effective Email Follow Up System – Part 4

Most of us don’t have the luxury of meeting and selling all of our potential customers in person. So, we use other tools to acquire new customers, like Paid Advertising (Web, Print, TV, radio), Referral Programs, Direct Mail, Website/Search Engine Optimization, Outbound and Inbound Sales Teams.

These things can get expensive fast. But as business owners, we do them so we can acquire customers and make more sales, even if our margins are lower than we’d like because the costs we incur to get a new sale are so high.

Wouldn’t You Prefer to Keep Your Revenues?

What if you could increase your sales without surrendering so much of your profits to these pricey acquisition tactics? I’m willing to bet you can. See, there’s a group of people you may not be marketing actively to now, who already know about your company, like what you have to offer and are more likely than anyone else to buy from you. To get at who they are, let’s take a look at how you’re making sales now.

A Typical Pattern For Online Sales

Let’s take a second to lay out your potential sales path:

Prospect hears about your company (through advertising, direct mail or one of the other tools we listed above)

Prospect comes to your website and while there, signs up to your email campaign.

You follow up by email (and possibly other methods) with prospect until s/he is ready to purchase

Prospect returns to your website and makes a purchase

Now, depending on whether you want people to purchase right on your website, or call you, or come into your physical store, your path may vary, but I think we can safely say that this is about what you envision happening with your own potential customers. Am I right? But what happens after that person buys from you?

What Happened To Step #5?

Sadly, for many businesses there is no step #5 in the above sales path. They attract a prospect, market to him/her, make a sale and move on to the next prospect. They don’t market to their own existing customers. At all. This is the definition of a wasted opportunity. Your existing customers already:

Know You and Your Company

Are Interested in What You Have to Offer

Trust You Enough to Make a Purchase

So why not continue to market to them? They’re much more likely to purchase from you in the future than a new prospect is.

What Can You Send Customers After The Sale?

A few ideas for email content to send your customers:

Product Training/Support Resources

Highlight Lesser-Known or Advanced Features/Uses

Solicit Feedback/Testimonials

Showcase Other Satisfied Customers and How They Use Your Product/Service

You can do this all while discussing related products or encouraging repeat purchases. If you sell a subscription based service, doing these things can cause your customers to stay subscribed for longer periods of time, increasing your revenue per customer. Don’t let your customer relationships wither and die after just one sale. Use an email marketing service like AWeber to make more sales and boost your profit-per-customer.

What’s Next?

Tomorrow, I’ll show you some creative ways to personalize your email messages. See you then.

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